Death Of A Truck Driver: Eu Requires Massive Safety Overhaul

The worker who’d been operating the forklift and left it running without its park brake on was charged by police initially with manslaughter but pleaded guilty to the lesser offence of dangerous driving causing death.

SafeWork NSW also investigated the incident and charged the forklift driver with WHS breaches for which he was subsequently convicted and fined.

SafeWork alleged that the truck driver’s employer was also at fault – it had contravened section ss 19 and 32 of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011, exposing workers and others to health and safety risks – a Category 2 offence.

On 5 June 2024, SafeWork NSW accepted an enforceable undertaking proposed by the employer in relation to the alleged contravention. An enforceable undertaking is an alternative to prosecution through the courts.

ENFORCEABLE UNDERTAKING

The 37-page undertaking required the company to deliver outcomes of the following strategies, each aimed at providing lasting work health and safety benefits across the workplace, the industry, and the community:

1. Trialling and subsequently implementing a Real-Time Location System that monitors the interaction between people and forklifts and responds by slowing forklifts and/or setting off alarms. This strategy was in response to the company’s own finding, after an internal review, that there were about 72,000 ‘potential collision events’ between people, plant and stacks of timber every year – more than they had previously estimated

2. Partnering with a mobile application developer to develop a QR code-operated mobile application that acts as a hub providing instruction, information and training on forklift operation for workers, and templates on operational and safety procedures that can be adopted and used by other businesses in the industry

3. Sharing with the wider warehousing and logistics industry the successes of ‘Smartsheet’ – a software system that has become a key pillar of the company’s daily operational safety oversight – as a means of managing and centralising safety and compliance documentation and data.

4. Undertaking targeted roadshows to communicate the above strategies as well as the impact the incident has had on the business and individuals in the business, to try and thwart the misconception that a fatal workplace incident ‘won’t happen to me’.

5. Disseminating information about the enforceable undertaking to all workplaces in the wider group of companies within which the employer operated, and funding forklift safety advertisements in industry publications and among the company’s own subscribers, to encourage businesses to prioritise the separation of pedestrians and plant.

This information was to be published as a public notice in the Sydney Morning Herald, acknowledging the fatality and the result of SafeWork’s investigation, and stating that SafeWork had accepted the undertaking.

The company was also required to engage a suitably qualified auditor to assess the WHSMS of the wider group of companies to which the employer belonged and ensure it complies with the principals of AS/NZS ISO 450001 - Occupational health and safety management systems – Requirements with guidance for use.

POST-INCIDENT RECTIFICATIONS AND CHANGES

The enforceable undertaking also set out the rectifications and changes the company had made to work health and safety systems and practices as a result of the accident, including:

• developing an enhanced traffic management plan
• refreshing safe operating procedures for forklift trucks, strapping timber packs, stacking timber packs, and loading and unloading trucks
• retraining workers in operational procedures and issuing a driver induction document
• reinforcing the pre-start safety check for forklift operators and introducing a folder system for all documentation relating to forklifts on-site
• creating a safety e-portal including a training portal for the whole business and a learning management system for employees, with a dashboard for monitoring safety
• establishing monthly reporting on WHS metrics to the Board of Directors
• establishing (or improving pre-existing) registers for training, contractor compliance, incidents, risks/hazards, and documentation of toolbox talks.
• establishing a WHS Strategic Action Plan and developing a new safety system.

In addition, the company installed traffic management plan signage, yard barriers, new lighting, a boom gate, height restriction bars in the shed, wall bracing and a CCTV system and devices. They also committed to bi-annual line marking, carried out an electrical upgrade and purchased a driver safety cage and other driver aids as well as tarps pullers and corner grabbers.

The company committed itself to ensuring that the contravention would not reoccur and that it would maintain ongoing effective management of work health and safety risks and related matters.

The total estimated value of the undertaking was in the range of $827,754.35 to $852,754.35.

The full undertaking – Enforceable undertaking given by John Cook & Sons Pty Ltd and accepted by SafeWork NSW